


light up all the years and watch them burn

by nerdywriiterchild (orphan_account)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Original Character(s), Worldbuilding, brief discussions of racism, i only wrote the scenes that went through major changes, or at least a bad attempt at it, quick implied edwin at the end, the role reversal is between hohenheim and trisha, those would be the xerxesians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26469196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nerdywriiterchild
Summary: in one life, it was an unlucky former slave that passed through the portal of truth.in this one, it was an unlucky daughter of an alchemist.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Trisha Elric, Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell, Alphonse Elric & Everyone, Edward Elric & Everyone, Trisha Elric/Van Hohenheim
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	light up all the years and watch them burn

**Author's Note:**

> okay so first! i took xerxesian names from ancient greek, persian and hindi, and the xerxesian words i use are taken from assorted indian languages - mainly because i would have killed to have some representation of where i'm from in more books/general media
> 
> second, i don't feel super satisfied with the ending, mainly because i feel like i don't really?? have their voices/characterizations down yet??
> 
> third, ed and al are twins in this au, largely because of [this](https://tallphonse.tumblr.com/post/628437668369448960/idk-why-but-ed-and-al-being-1-year-apart-really) tumblr post

The Hashemi family is well-known among Xerxesians; in the days when Xerxes was still a young country, an ancestor must have made a name for themselves, undoubtedly with what Xerxesians now know as alchemy.

Amrit Hashemi followed in his family’s bloodline, eventually getting himself appointed as a royal alchemist. His children, on the other hand, didn’t inherit his penchant for the science. 

(If you had asked Amrit, he wouldn’t have cared about their lack of interest in alchemy: his children’s lives are theirs, not his, and Xerxesians have long believed that nobody has the right to influence a life that isn’t theirs.)

\----

“Kourosh _,_ everyone knows you have a crush on Zhaleh,” Anthousa declares flatly one afternoon as the three siblings are coming home from school.

“Yeah, well, _you_ have a thing for Kaya, don’t you?” Kourosh counters. “That’s why you li-”

“ _Kourosh!_ ” Anthousa's face flushes, but she doesn’t deny it. “That has nothing to do with anything!”

Kourosh grins, sticking his tongue out and taking off running. Anthousa follows; Varsha, the youngest, is left to trail after her siblings and call for them to “Wait up!” and “Come back here!”

\----

“Hello, _akka_ ,” the thing inside the flask says.

“I’m not your _akka_ ,” Varsha protests immediately. This must be the thing her father had been talking about, the thing he had given his blood.

The thing confirms her suspicions: “But we were both born of your father’s blood, were we not?”

\----

A fire burns in the center of the metal square. Anthousa ties one end of the string to her foot, then hands the other to Kaya, who knots it around her own foot. With their feet tied together, they walk around the fire, together, three times. Varsha smiles and joins the cheering of the crowd: weddings are celebrated as unions of souls, the couple finding homes for their hearts in each other.

\----

The eye had opened under her feet, sucked her in, and it had hurt beyond anything she could have imagined.

Now it’s quiet, too quiet, but at the same time, her ears fill with anguished screams.

“ _Amma? Baba?”_ She whispers, trying desperately to find them, to confirm that they’re alive. “ _Dada? Akka?”_

“Hello, _akka_ ,” and that voice is so familiar in all the wrong ways. She looks up, and the thing has taken the form of her father. The voices, she realizes a little too late, are coming from her own mind.

When it tells her what it had done, what she had enabled it to do, Varsha Hashemi _screams_.

\----

She becomes known in Xing as the Western Sage, the one responsible for bringing them the foundations of alkahestry.

She can’t help but reflect on the irony: she never had an interest in alchemy before the circle, but now, she’s inadvertently made a name for herself in it.

\----

She meets Theodore Elric when he is eighteen, and she pushes him away nearly immediately after he tells her how he feels.

She meets him again when he’s nineteen, and this time, she tells him about the land she used to call home, of its destruction, of the souls she was forced to house. She tells him everything and prepares herself to push him away again - he is innocent, and he does not deserve to have his life, too, stolen by her. 

She doesn’t get the chance.

“Didn’t you say that Xerxesians believe that people aren’t supposed to influence lives that aren’t theirs?”

“Yes,” she accedes, because she had. “But this is different.”

“No, it’s not! You’re not stealing my life if _I_ choose to give it to you!”

Theodore Elric and Varsha Hashemi marry in 1898 in a small ceremony - a purely Amestrian wedding - in Resembool. 

They transmute the kindling block and buy the string of Varsha's childhood not long later.

\----

The people of Resembool, if asked, will say that they have never met anyone named Varsha Hashemi. They only know Trisha Elric, the local weaver. And if Trisha Elric has golden eyes rather than blue or green and carries sun-marked skin instead of the common Amestrian pale? Appearances have never taken precedence over niches, and it so happens that the sheep in Resembool provide more than enough wool for Varsha Hashemi to slide into the town’s economy like she’s lived there her whole life.

\----

She hadn’t expected herself to be able to have children, but now that she does, she wouldn’t change that fact for the world.

“I was thinking maybe Nicholas if it’s a boy?”

“Cultures only die when people forget them.” Theodore replies out of the blue.

“Huh?”

“What about a Xerxesian name?”

She pauses; Theodore continues.

“If it’ll make them stand out to the man under Central that you told me about, we can always put Amestrian names down instead.”

\----

Esmail Hashemi-Elric is born in 1899, Anil Hashemi-Elric in the first few moments of 1900, in their parents’ home in Resembool, among their father's close friends and family. Esmail is born with his mother's sun-touched hair and eyes to match; his birth certificate names him Edward Richard Elric, his father Theodore Elric, and his mother Trisha Elric. Anil is born with hair a shade closer to brown than his mother's, and his father's green eyes; his birth certificate names him Alphonse Nicholas Elric, his brother, Edward Richard Elric, his father Theodore Elric, and his mother Trisha Elric.

On paper, the Elrics are a perfect Amestrian family. But paper says nothing of the curling, twisting script they learn along with their ABCs, nothing of their bronze skin, halfway between Xerxes and Amestris, nothing of the small knitted toys around the house, nothing of the foreign tongue of the lullabies Varsha sings to her sons on nights they can’t sleep, nothing of the way the children call their mother _Amma_ and their father _Baba_. 

\----

They take a picture together, all four of them - a way of immortalizing their family. It’s the only form of immortality she wants them to have.

As the camera flashes, she does not see the light: her eyes are shut to hide the tears welling up in them.

\----

It was a matter of time before they got into alchemy - what with her father’s affinity for it and the simple transmutation circles Theodore had begun teaching them, it wasn’t a question of _if_ , but rather of _when_.

“Amma?” Anil asks hesitantly, looking up at the small bird on the floor. “Did we do something wrong?”

She hesitates, thinking of the alchemy that killed her country, thinking of the hunt for the Philosopher’s Stone that had devolved Xing into a fifty-clan system that forced children to vie for power, thinking of a little blonde girl with her hands wrapped around herself and her parents nowhere to be seen.

She wants to believe, though, that her sons will not fall into that trap. She _has_ to believe it, both for their sake and for her own.

“No,” she responds finally. “I’m so proud of you both.”

\----

Esmail is young, but he’s not stupid: he notices how Amma flinches when she reads news about the civil war. It’s not something he really pays any attention to, though, until Anil asks.

“Amma, why does Winry call Sara-atta and Yuriy-kaka Mom and Dad? We don’t call you and Baba Mom and Dad.”

She hesitates before answering; Esmail notices that, too. “It’s because I’m not from Amestris; I’m from a place called Xerxes.”

After that, the brothers learn to call themselves nothing but Edward and Alphonse, refer to their mother as Mom and their father as Dad - they learn to hide all traces of their Xerxesian roots in public. Even at this age, they’ve learned: even though Resembool keeps its people safe, Amestrians, as a whole, are not kind to those who look or sound different.

(What they’re too young to know is this: Xerxesian names are distinct. If not for the veil of regularity surrounding the Elric family, the shell of a man under Central City would have found them in an instant - and he would not have shown them any mercy.)

\----

Esmail and Anil are five when their mother leaves.

It’s a normal spring day - well, normal except for one thing. Amma and Baba are standing by the door; a suitcase is by Amma’s feet, and Baba’s holding a small bowl.

When he gets closer, Esmail realizes it's a bowl of yogurt and sugar. That means Amma is going somewhere.

“Amma?” He asks when she and Baba turn to face him. Anil stands by his side, silent. “Where’re you going?”

She turns to face them; her eyes flickering with something almost like realization, then growing warmer.

“Do you remember when I told you about Xerxes?”

“Yeah,” Anil pipes up, a note of surprise in his voice. “Does it have to do with Xerxes?”

“Yes, it does. I… have to do something important.”

“Will you be back soon?”

“As soon as I can.”

“Promise,” Esmail tells her, holding out his pinkie finger because Winry always makes him make pinkie promises.

She doesn’t take his pinkie. Instead, she ruffles his hair.

“ _I swear it on my soul_ ,” she murmurs in Xerxesian. Standing, she takes the spoon resting in the bowl, places the yogurt in her right hand and swallows it, then opens the door and leaves. 

(Anil doesn't say it, then or in the years that will follow, but he thinks he sees tears in his mother's eyes.)

\-----

Theodore Elric dies only a few months after the departure of his wife. The people of Resembool call it a tragedy, a cruel twist of fate that left the brothers without parents.

\-----

“If Amma were here, would she agree to help us?”

“Doubt it,” Esmail grumbles, rolling over. He tries to ignore the tinge of worry their mother’s face carried in each and every memory of their performing alchemy. "Whatever she's off doing is probably more important to her than us, anyway."

\-----

“One is all and all is one,” Mrs. Curtis declares. “If you two can’t figure out the meaning of that riddle in one month’s time, I’m shipping you boys back to Resembool.”

Ed and Al trade looks, confirming the thought they’re sharing.

“We can tell you what it means _now_!”

Mrs. Curtis turns back, surprise evident in her eyes.

(She still makes them spend a month on the island, though.)

\----

In Dublith, Esmail learns how to be _loud_ , and unrepentantly so. Because Anil, with his Xerxesian skin and Amestrian eyes, is an outsider in both worlds. Of course, being loud means that he comes home one day with bruises and a bloody nose and fist from a fight.

“He said it was weird that our skin is darker than his and that it’s _wrong_ -” Esmail practically spits the word out as he takes his shoes off and sets them by the front door. “That Anil has green eyes. _And_ he called me short!”

(Izumi might’ve laughed at the insult to his height being placed on equal footing as the insult to his brother's eyes if she wasn’t so busy hoping that the hierarchy he placed wasn’t just in his speech.)

He only whispers it after his nose has stopped bleeding and Teacher's helped him wash the dried fragments of it away: "Anil's eyes are the same color as Baba's."

“Then they're not wrong,” Teacher says like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

(And maybe it is.)

\----

Sarah-atta and Yuriy-kaka die a few months after that day, in Ishval. Winry sobs like a baby would when she gets the news. 

_Maybe once we bring Baba back, we can bring Sarah-atta and Yuriy-kaka back, too? That would make Winry smile, too._

\----

They give the books about Xerxes and the toys their mother had knit for them when they were much younger to Winry before they burn their house down - it’s a cremation of sorts, laying their ability to come back home to rest. Besides their names, those small things are all that remains of the land that would have been their home. Besides, Al had mentioned that he wanted to read them during the nights, to give himself something to do.

\----

“Where’d you say you were from?” Havoc frowns. “Resembool?”

“Yeah, why?”

He knows what hangs on the sniper’s tongue as well as the latter does: _You don’t look like a Resembool kid._

_\----_

Lieutenant Hawkeye looks at him like she's trying to place his face, like she _recognizes_ him from somewhere.

\----

"It makes sense that he, as a survivor of the genocide, would try to seek justice."

Esmail Hashemi-Elric stays quiet, because yes, Scar _does_ have the right to judge the State Alchemists for the murder of his people. Besides, he doesn't know if he would act any differently if he was in Scar's place.

"That's not justice," Edward Elric responds. 

"The next time we meet, we'll kill him," Mustang declares.

Edward Elric stays silent.

_No, you don't have that right, not when you're one of the people who destroyed his homeland_ , Esmail Hashemi-Elric thinks.

\----

“Al, you _idiot_!” Winry shouts. “He was worried that you blamed him for what happened!”

She continues, her voice quieter so that none of the nurses hear: “He hasn’t called you Anil since that day because he thinks he gave up the right to your name.”

(On the rooftop,

“Ed?”

“Esmail. Yeah, Al?”

“Anil.”)

\----

Rush Valley, and amid the sound of Miss Satella's shouts and the rain pattering against the house, Esmail prays. He doesn't know the song that's traditionally sung when a child is born, so this is all he can do. And anyways, they'll be gone in a month.

\----

They learn of Maes Hughes’ death through Maria Ross, and Ed knows that he’s the only one that can carry the weight of guilt for it.

He wasn’t expecting Mrs. Gracia to forgive him so easily.

\----

The expression fixed on Ling’s face, directed at him, almost looks like he’s trying to remember something.

“What?”

The expression stays there for a few seconds.

“Nothing.” 

\----

As Esmail stares at the corpse of Maria Ross, red blurs his vision. Fire is supposed to be for weddings, for _pujas_ \- even when it was used in cremations, that was always left up to the family. Fire shouldn’t be used for _this_. Never this. 

_“What’s the meaning of this?”_

\----

Breda and the Major take him to the ruins of Xerxes, and all he can do is stare.

\----

Human transmutation is impossible, and, well. He should have realized earlier.

\----

"Winry!" Ed and Al shout. "Don't do this!"

_It'll be a judgement, but not a clear-headed one._

\----

"It's your-" _hands_ , Esmail almost says, but hands only take people so far. "It's your soul. It wasn't meant to take life, it was meant to save it."

\----

“Al’s still fighting, so I’ve got to go. I’ll tell you everything once we get back. Cross my heart and hope to die,” he murmurs, because even though Winry knows some of the customs he and Anil grew up with, she doesn’t speak Xerxesian, doesn’t know the full weight behind the words, and there’s no time to explain them. 

\----

“You transmuted the people of Xerxes - _my people_ \- into a Philosopher’s Stone, _didn’t you_?” Esmail practically hisses at Envy. Ling turns toward him, surprise giving way to horror. 

“Get us out of here and I’ll tell you,” Envy responds smoothly.

Working with someone directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of both the Xerxesians and the Ishvalans is the last thing he wants to do. But Anil matters more than any of that right now.

(He tries not to wonder if the souls inside Envy, the souls that the transmutation took as a toll, were his family.)

\----

“Al!” He shouts to his brother, carries the words across the vast Portal. “I’ll come back for you - _I swear it on my soul!_ ”

\----

“Oh, this is a surprise!” He seems genuinely surprised, and happy, too. “My _akka_ went and had children?”

Ed pulls his hand away from the man. “My mother was the _youngest_ of her siblings.”

Things go downhill pretty quickly after that.

\----

"What about the toll?" Al asks.

"I... I had to use the stone inside Envy."

"You- Those were people's lives!"

Esmail is silent.

"Esmail?"

No response. Anil _knows_ that silence.

"They _weren't_ ," he hisses out, more to convince himself than anything. 

His brother's lack of a response confirms what he didn't want to accept as true.

"Why?"

"You didn't see your body," Esmail whispers. "And- they thanked me."

\----

Miles knows that the Elric brothers aren’t fully Amestrian; judging by the diluted desert on the elder’s skin and the sun in his hair and eyes, he suspects that they might be sons of the Sun. Even with that suspicion, though, he says it:

“It was you Amestrians that destroyed the land of my ancestors.”

The elder brother - Edward, he thinks - hesitates, then responds with, “And Ishvalans were the ones who set fire to my hometown; an Ishvalan killed our childhood friend’s parents. Neither of us were directly involved in the war, and I know the Amestrians committed atrocities against the Ishvalans, but that doesn’t change the fact that nothing will justify the murders of the Rockbells.”

_When he mentioned the Amestrian atrocities, he didn't say 'we',_ Miles notices before he starts laughing.

\----

"I'd never want to-"

He stops, remembering, realizing, _chastising_ all at once.

_Xerxes was destroyed in a single night._

_A philosopher's stone bigger than the ones I've already seen would require a countless amount of souls._

_She said it was something important, something related to Xerxes._

_"Whatever she's off doing is probably more important to her than us, anyway."_

_You idiot_ , Esmail hisses at himself.

_\----_

They get to Liore and,

“Amma?”

“Edward? Alphonse?”

“It’s me, Al!”

Realization - and pain - flashes on her face as she looks at the suit of armor that houses his soul.

“And, uh, you can call me Anil.”

“No, I don’t have that right anymore. It would be like stealing from you.”

“No, it wouldn’t! _I’m_ giving my name back to you!”

( _“Yes, but this is different.”_

_“No, it’s not! You’re not stealing my life if_ I _choose to give it to you!”_ )

“Thank you, Anil.”

\----

“Wait,” Winry insists, running down the creaky stairs, returning with a bowl of yogurt and sugar in her hand. “Take this, stop these guys, and then, Esmail, _promise me_ you and Anil will get your bodies back! Do _anything_ to make that happen.”

\----

Pride tells him about its mother in the dome, talks about its surprise at her selflessness.

Anil thinks of his own mother in the spaces between Pride’s words.

\----

"Give that _thing_ to me," the Colonel hisses.

"No."

"It needs to die as painfully as possible for what it's done."

"And maybe it does! But _you're_ not clear-headed enough to judge that! Look at yourself in the mirror; how do you expect to lead this country with a face like that?"

\----

The thing - because it is not really human - that, according to their mother, looks like their grandfather smirks and spawns people; both Esmail and his mother freeze in horror at the sight.

\----

“Mei, can you do me a favor?”

“What is it, Alphonse?”

“My name. It's Anil.” He knows that asking Mei to carry his name and to help him do this is too much to ask, but there’s no other way.

He ignores Esmail’s shouts at him to stop and Mei’s sobs, and he claps his hands together.

\----

It’s only fitting, in the end, that Esmail is the one to free the souls of his people from Father’s confinement of them. A clear-headed judgement, of sorts.

\----

“Edward,” the voice is tired, pained, touched by too much loss. He doesn’t remember ever seeing his mother that tired before, and suddenly it all hits him: a swirling mass of emotion threatening to spill over in the form of sobs. “Use my life to bring Anil back.”

“I could never do that- it’s _our_ fault we lost our bodies! If you try to give your life for our sins, I’ll -” he stops, forcing a breath out through his tears. “I don’t know _what_ I’ll do, Amma!”

(Pride and shame well up in equal measures - pride that her son grew up valuing human life as much as his ancestors - his family - in Xerxes would have, and shame that she had left him so young, left him to grow up so quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, because it’s all she can do.)

There's a certain sense of irony about it, that the only homunculus to survive is also a firstborn son of Xerxes. 

\----

Edward gives up his alchemy, and both the Hashemi-Elric brothers give up the cloak they’ve been living under for years: there is no more danger from the thing that is not and never will be their grandfather.

_“They’re your names_ ,” their mother had told them once. _“You’re the only ones who get to decide who you give them to_.”

\----

"Hey, Winry," Esmail begins, his voice shaking slightly.

"Yeah?"

"I think," he trails off, lets the thought - the _feeling_ \- die before it speaks itself into acknowledgement.

"What, Esmail? Just spit it out."

One breath, two breaths, three breaths.

"I think my soul's home!"

Winry flushes bright red at the words, armed now with the full meaning behind them.

\----

Two weeks after Esmail and Anil Hashemi-Elric leave on their respective voyages east and west, Anil gets a phone call from his brother.

_“Hey, Anil?”_

“Yeah?” 

“ _Can I ask you a favor?”_

“What, do you want me to transmute a kindling block or something?”

The sputters on the other end of the phone of “Winry was the one who suggested it!” are all the answer he needs. He chuckles a little before he continues.

“Alright, Esmail _,_ I’ll do it when I get back to Resembool.”


End file.
